ABSTRACT
Attendance in pre-marital education and counseling program may be the couple's first encounter with the health care system. Their perception and satisfaction of this program would play critical role in further use of health services. The purpose of this study was to identify the quality gap of pre-marital education and counseling program from viewpoint of couples referring to premarital counseling centers of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2010. In a descriptive cross-sectional study, a total of 1200 couples attending in premarital counseling centers were selected with non random sampling method and studied using SERVQUAL questionnaire. Data were analyzed with Wilcoxon, independent t-test, analysis of variance, and Turkey tests using SPSS version 18. The mean age of couples was 25.5 +/- 4.8 years, 65.8% of subjects were women and 34.2% were men. 56.5% of the couples had high school diploma or higher. There was negative service quality gap [-0.1] between expected and received services. The most service quality gap was in assurance dimension [-0.23] and the least was in empathy dimension [-0.04]. There was no significant difference between gap score mean, gender, and history of participation in premarital counseling classes, but there was significant difference in gap score between different education levels [p<0.001]. Regarding to negative gap between received and expected service; health care system should consider the couples' expectation to improve the quality of premarital education and counseling program